Sidney Portier

In any other year, the British actor Idris Elba would be on the short list of possible Best Actor nominees for his towering performance in the new film Nelson Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom. Tracing Nelson Mandela’s life from his start as a 1950s apartheid opponent through his long imprisonment to his ultimate rise as president of South Africa, Elba displays a range as wide as the experience of the man he portrays. But this is the year of Chewitel …